Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has got to be one of my favorite times of year. Not just because it's a holiday, not because I got free turkey (we actually ate pork, not turkey), not because I got to buy a ton of books for less than $10 (due to Black Friday sales), but because we got to make the long trip to visit my little old grandmother in Indiana! I got to hang out with my amazing, out-of-college cousins, play Boggle, drink caffeine-free Mountain Dew (yes, it exists), talk about video games and awesome books with my brothers and said cousins, and just overall have a good time. Doesn't sound that great? You weren't there! It was awesome!

What's a real shame is that throughout the day and the days surrounding it, I forgot to celebrate the holiday itself. I could tell a history lesson and inform you all of the story behind Thanksgiving, but you should just look it up yourself.

Now, a basic tradition of Thanksgiving is to... be thankful for things. I'd completely forgotten about this (hey, I was having fun!), so now, two days later, I will recall and be thankful for many things. I am aware that I most likely missed many people, and I apologize. It took me an entire afternoon to write this article.

Happy Birthday, Ted Dekker!

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of NYT bestselling author Ted Dekker. I've read almost all of his books, and I even met him earlier this year. To celebrate the man's 49th birthday, I got together with some people—okay, a lot of people—and gave him the only gift anyone needs: love.

Click here to see what we did for this blue monkey's birthday.

Happy Birthday, Ted!

The Priest's Graveyard Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations to Heather Unrau for winning a signed copy of The Priest's Graveyard by Ted Dekker! Thanks everyone else who entered as well. It was tempting to pick the winner manually, but I figured I would stick to my word and pick randomly. I used a program my friend made.

So where have I been? Well I'm sorry you missed it, but I had a birthday! I am now at 15 years of age. This has some upsides, such as I can now get my driver's permit, but it also has downsides, such as people won't be as shocked when they hear the age of the operator of this blog. Seriously, someone (David Hu, one of the administrators of Raptr) was surprised, after looking over one of my blogs, that I was under 18. I never even told him that at the time I was 14.

At present I have a very long list of books to read, so I'll hopefully review more soon. I am currently reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens for school, and I am reading The Bone House by Stephen R. Lawhead for pleasure. After that, I will be reading Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee, The 13th Tribe by Robert Liparulo and Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. There are about half a dozen other books I'll read afterward, but I don't have an order for when I'll read them.

In addition, Monday was Labor Day, so I have an excuse for not starting my new Monday weekly trend (song reviewing). Well, forget the fact that I did nothing abnormal on Monday.

So yes, that is an update on my life! What do you think? Should I have more giveaways in the future? If you think so, "Like" my new Facebook page and leave a comment on this post. Don't worry, I don't have that big of a fan following, so you'll have pretty good odds of winning future giveaways. :)

Reuben Horst
Age 15

Am I bad luck?

That's a question that popped into my mind earlier today as I was playing volleyball at the activity center gym at Menno Haven. Am I bad luck? Today is Memorial Day, but the Mennonite summer camp calls it Rally Day. We got to hang out with people we haven't seen in five years, eat a great meal prepared by a great cook, play group games and such, and so on.

That's how I came to be playing volleyball with some friends, and that's how the question was raised. I would consider myself to be the worst volleyball player on earth, but that doesn't mean the rest of my team shouldn't do as good, right?

Pretty much the only time I can hit the ball is when I serve, and even then I usually serve it too far, and it goes out. Whenever the ball was served right to me, I either ignored it and continued standing like a dummy, or went for it and either missed or pathetically hit it nowhere, scoring for the other team.

My team lost, so someone on the other team offered to switch with me. And then my new team lost, and the team I was on won. No matter what team I'm on, I seem to lose, and this doesn't only happen with volleyball. I can sense my teammates inwardly groaning and rolling their eyes towards me, wondering, "is he good at any sports?"

The simple answer is yes, I am a pretty decent soccer player. I also dominate at carpet ball, but that does not count, as it's not really a sport. This is completely beside the point, though. I suck at most sports, but no matter how good or bad anyone does, my team always seems to lose, no matter what sport we're playing. There's the rare occasion that we utterly destroy our opponents, but as I said, it is rare.

When the game was over and we were messing around for a minute or two before leaving, I picked up a ball and served it over the net, just to prove that I can in fact play volleyball... and it landed in the small space between the boundary and the wall of the gym. Out.

It's strange how one bad player can bring so much bad luck to an entire team.

~Reuben/Arkatox~

Happy Easter!

Just wanted to say Happy Easter! Just a heads up, my next blog post will be a review of an ARC (advanced reader's copy, aka a book that I got before it was out) that I have acquired, and after that will be my 50th blog post on this blog. In that post, I'm going to give a sort-of long update on my life. Look forward to seeing you then!

~Reuben/Arkatox~

Happy Late Legend of Zelda Day!

Twenty-five years ago, minus one day. That was when The Legend of Zelda was first released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I wish I had found out yesterday, when it was the day.



The fact that yesterday was also President's Day alluded me as well. Probably because I don't care. Anyway, for celebration, here's a medley composed by Casper Smit featuring all of the ocarina warp songs in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, metal style!



Anyway, Mountain Dew Voltage for everyone! Have a nice day!

~Reuben/Arkatox~

Happy New Year!

You know, it really doesn't feel like 2011. Still feels like 2010.

The reason I haven't been so bloggy in the past couple of days, is due to my life being pretty busy. Been playing a lot of new computer games, due to the release of the Humble Indie Bundle #2, and all of the totally wicked deals on Steam. I recently started reading the international best-seller Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. It's the first of thirteen books in a series of the same name.

I've made very few New Years resolutions, and the few I've made I'd like to keep private.

I've had an awesome year, thanks to the awesome people who've kept me alive these years. This holiday season has been a bit depressing for a few reasons, but I'll get over it.

Anyway, I hope to see you guys all around! The only person I know for sure who reads my blog regularly is my grandpa, but Happy New Year to anyone else also!

Enigmatically without delay (whatever that means),
~Reuben/Arkatox

Merry Late Christmas!

Well, only a day later.



Hopefully you got a nice laugh. Hope you enjoyed your Christmas season as much as I have!

Merry Christmas!

~Reuben/Arkatox~

Merry Early Christmas!

Merry Christmas from me to you!



~Reuben/Arkatox~

Immanuel's Veins

Do you like action? Adventure? Romance? Supernaturalism? Awesomeness? Immanuel's Veins by Ted Dekker has a perfect blend of everything, and to top it all, it's historical fiction (one of my personal favorite genres).

It's a story of love, and a story of hate. The story follows a Russian warrior named Toma Nicolescu in 1772, AD, who works specifically for Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. Toma was assigned with his best friend to guard and protect the royal family of Moldavia, but not everything goes as plan. Strange occurrences happen, and Toma is suddenly thrown into the impossible world of the supernatural. Things happen that shouldn't, people die and come back to life, and he's stuck in the middle of it all. He will have to put his soul to the test if he is to defeat the evil and save those whom he loves.

This is a story of heroism, betrayal, and sacrifice. I know I said something similar about an earlier review, The Silver Branch (by Rosemary Sutcliff), but this time I mean it in a stronger way. This book grabs your soul and shakes it, and in the end it helps you remember just how powerful and awesome our God is.

But I must warn you, this book is officially rated PG-13 by the author. I would not exactly call it family friendly. As has been said of this book:

This book is for everyone, but not everyone is for this book.

If you love supernatural stories that rattle the soul, but still shows us the greatness of God, I'd recommend this novel. It is one of the best books I have read in my life.

~Reuben/Arkatox~

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Halloween! (A Day Late)

Click the image above for a humorous Trick-or-Treat video by Christian comedian Tim Hawkins.

Happy Halloween!

~Reuben/Arkatox~